


Diamonds Are Forever

by agalaxywithinyou



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Criminal AU, M/M, Mild Gore, Swearing, cool heist stuff like crawling through ventilation shafts and laser fields, diamond heist, diamond thieves keith and lance, mild description of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 20:00:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9140071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agalaxywithinyou/pseuds/agalaxywithinyou
Summary: Keith touched down on the floor and levelled him with an unimpressed look as he detached himself from the rope. “Who are you?”Lance scoffed in offense as he ducked under the first laser. “Who am I? Uh, the name's Lance McClain. Highly skilled diamond thief.”“Never heard of you.”“That means I’m good at what I do.”“Or it means you’re shit.”Or, Lance is a diamond thief working a job, Keith is working the same job, and oh man, they might have to actually work together to get out of this alive.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is written for sadskiesandshootingstars over on tumblr for the Voltron Secret Santa! Seriously hope you enjoy - happy holidays and have a great new year!

  **"** diamonds are forever,  
_sparkling round my little finger._  
_unlike men, the diamonds linger;_  
_men are mere mortals who  
__are not worth going to your grave for_ **"**

 

✦ ✧ ✦

 

Paris was a pretty sight at night. All glimmering lights upon centuries old stone, constant traffic blurring into trails of colour, the murmuring of thousands of people going about their lives. It was even better from up on the rooftops, gazing across the city that never seemed to sleep, looking up at the few stars visible in the inky black. They twinkled down at everyone slowly, most of them obscured by fog and smoke and the many lights that made the city so beautiful. They looked like diamonds, strewn carelessly across a velvet backdrop.

Coincidentally, that was exactly what had brought Lance McClain to the city of love.

He stopped artfully surveying the picturesque vista around him, dropped to one knee, and opened the black duffel bag at his feet. He started pulling out and assembling his equipment – all of it expensive, all of it gathered after his many years in this highly illegal but lucrative business. A glass cutter, a harness, a winch, dozens of metres of military grade cord, a small backpack filled with everything he would need once he got inside.

Mentally assessing that he had everything, he checked himself down. A cool breeze played on his face before he pulled on a balaclava, obscuring everything but his eyes, and he adjusted his black turtleneck. A fashion disaster by itself, he knew, but paired with the all black ensemble, he knew he looked like a professional diamond thief.

Which he was.

He hid the near empty duffel bag behind a large cooling system, pulled his backpack over his shoulders, and approached his ticket in to the highly secure building – a ventilation shaft, of course.

He pressed two fingers to his ear, making sure that the com was secure, and spoke past the fabric obscuring his mouth. “Pidge? Hunk? Cut the alarm on the vent. I’m going in.”

There was a bit of static before Pidge’s routine sarcastic remark sounded in his ear. “About time. Hunk and I could have remotely hacked the diamond out of there by now.”

Lance scoffed a laugh as he slipped a small drill from his belt and quickly removed the screws holding the vent in place. He wrapped his gloved hands around the grate and tugged, pulled it free in one smooth motion, then set it aside. No alarm went off, of course. Hunk had been his tech support from the beginning, and Pidge a recent addition since they had started taking on more difficult jobs. He trusted them with his life and they hadn’t failed him once.

No, scratch that. Pidge had fucked him over before on purpose, because they had thought it would be funny. Unsurprisingly, it hadn’t been funny. He had nearly lost a limb to a particularly angry German shepherd.

Scowling at the memory, Lance slipped into the ventilation shaft with practiced ease, getting onto his hands and knees and beginning the arduous crawl through the tight space.

“I’ll have you know,” gritted Lance, taking a left and mentally following the path he had previously memorised, “that my job is really hard and requires preparation. I know you guys are sitting there eating Doritos and having a great time _not_ being sliced in half by laser fields.”

There was a long pause from the other end, and Lance listened to the strange echoing of the ventilation shaft before Hunk spoke with his mouth very obviously full. “We’re not, promise.”

It took all of Lance’s control not to laugh out loud, a noise he knew would echo rather suspiciously, but he grinned as he took a right and then another left. Before long, he came to an opening in the bottom of the shaft, covered by a grate. He repeated the same process as before, this time taking a little more care to keep it quiet, and carefully pushed the offending piece of metal aside. He stuck his head out of the ventilation shaft and quickly assessed the brightly lit ornate corridor beneath him.

It was exactly what one would expect from the Parisian home of a wealthy businessman who, Lance knew, operated in the realm of heists himself – he went by the name Zarkon, and his crime ring of highly specialised thieves, mercenaries, and all round bad characters were known as the Galra. Lance couldn’t count the number of heists that they had ruined for him, either by getting there first or giving anonymous tips to the cops, and he really, _really_ hated their guts.

Which is exactly why when Allura, a highly skilled thief and long-time rival of the Galra, had suggested that they steal from Zarkon what he had stolen from Allura’s late father – well, Lance had never agreed to a job so quickly in his life.  

He shifted his position slightly, trying to get a good look at the length of the corridor. The floor was marble, the walls adorned with flashy light fixtures that looked like they belonged in a century’s old palace, and at least four security cameras blinked innocently at him from different corners.

Pidge would already be looping the footage to give the appearance that no black clad individual was sneaking through their halls, but he didn’t have long until someone noticed the incorrect timestamp on the video.

Thankfully, Lance worked well under pressure.

He manoeuvred himself out over the vent opening and dropped to the floor. He landed in a smooth crouch and looked around, no hint of the laughter that had been on his face mere minutes before. This was business now; his life and millions of dollars were now on the line. He couldn’t – _wouldn’t_ – fuck it up.

Hunk spoke up in his ear, accompanied by a slight buzz of static. “You’re doing great, Lance. We’re tracking your progress and all security cams are dealt with. Start making your way to the target room.”

“Copy that.”

With Pidge and Hunk handling keeping his presence unknown in the building, it was up to him to disable any security measures that weren’t electronic or too difficult to access. Lance never had much information on what he might come across in trying to get to the target – he could find armed guards, security dogs, laser fields, pressure sensitive floors, or motion sensitive alarms around every corner. Everything was a surprise, one that had to be dealt with quickly and effectively.

But if their past twenty-six heists were anything to go off, and the fact that he hadn’t yet been arrested, he was pretty damn good at it.

Lance started walking briskly down the wide corridor, footsteps quiet against the marble, and slowed as he came to the first doorway. He peeked round the corner, saw an empty exhibition room with walls lined with paintings, and slipped past. The contents of the room undoubtedly added up to millions of dollars, but art theft wasn’t his area of expertise. The next two doorways were much the same, neither holding any surprises, but it was after that that things got interesting.

If his memory served him correctly about the floor plan they had gotten their hands on – which he knew it did – the next series of corridors were almost maze-like in construction. Somewhere in the centre lay a heavily guarded room, in which he would find the target.

Confident in his memorisation of said floor plan, he took a right at the end of the corridor and stuck to the walls, knowing that he would most likely run into security guard patrols around here. A few moments later Pidge spoke, but their voice was considerably distorted by static and nearly indecipherable. “Lance, I – think – blocking our signals. You’re on your –”

And then they cut out. Lance wasn’t fazed. This deep in a billionaire crime bosses building, it wouldn’t be out of the question for them to be operating jammers of some kind. It just meant if something went wrong, he wouldn’t get a warning. But Lance had dealt with worse situations.

He took a left and then a right, passing closed doors of extravagantly engraved dark wood and small chandeliers dangling from the ceiling. It was unnervingly quiet, his footsteps now seeming impossibly loud against the silence, and his fingers were itching to curl into a fist just in case he did come across a security guard.

So, of course, not even three seconds later, that’s exactly what happened.

Two men in black suits, obviously on a scheduled round, came to a sudden halt the moment that Lance locked eyes with them. There was a long moment in which neither party moved, the men seemingly in disbelief at how someone got past their multiple layers of security, and Lance thinking of the best way to incapacitate them.

“Hey, fellas,” he grinned, and before they could reach for the guns at their hips, he rushed them.

He easily dodged the first punch thrown his way, spun around, and swept the guy’s feet out from underneath him. A well-aimed kick in the direction of the others groin saw him hunkering over in pain, and Lance took advantage of that by smashing his knee into his nose. There was a soft click from behind him – someone turning the safety off on their gun – and Lance responded as quickly as anything.

He turned, slapped the gun aside so it wouldn’t actually blow his brains out. One hand on the guard’s fist, clenched around the trigger. The other on his wrist. Snap the bone with a quick jerking motion in either direction.

Before he could scream in pain, Lance grabbed him by the lapels of his suit and head-butted him, _hard_. His eyes rolled into the back of the head and he let him drop to the floor.

He stood still for a brief moment, trying to catch his breath, before scrambling to zip tie the guard’s wrists and ankles together. Once he was sure they were securely incapacitated, he gritted his teeth and started taking the corridors at a quick jog.

Two unconscious security guards who could be discovered at any minute and nearly a minute of lost time meant that Lance was in trouble. While he had expected to be delayed, the thought of fucking up this mission was just too terrible to consider. Weeks of preparation had gone into this job and it would be his only chance to stick it to Zarkon and the Galra.

He rounded a corner, ducked back behind it and let another two man security detail pass out of sight. Another set of confusing twists and turns and he finally came to a slow stop in front of what had to be _the_ door.

It was unassuming, dark wood engraved with ornate patterns, much like the rest. But when he tried the handle, it opened onto a short corridor at the end of which stood a heavy looking metal vault door.

Lance felt a smirk tug on his lips. “Bingo.”

He strode over to it and inspected the security mechanism. A nine digit keypad, wired into the wall, completely spotless with no fingerprints to tell him which keys had been pressed. Lance didn’t waste any time in prising the metal casing away from the wall with a small crowbar, and then procuring a small electronic device from his bag. Following instructions that had been drilled into him years ago, he cut the green wire, exposed the metal, and clipped the device onto it. It activated immediately, and numbers flashed across the small LED screen built into it as it ran through and attempted the dozens of thousands of possible combinations.

Lance closed the first wooden door after himself, locked it from the inside to give himself an extra few seconds when the guards came after him, and after a minute or so heard a small beep come from the device. He watched as the keypad flashed green in affirmation of the correct code being entered, and there was a hiss of air as the heavy door swung open a few inches.

He almost wanted to laugh. He’d expected Zarkon’s security measures to be a little more… well, impressive. Not able to be bypassed with a simple passcode decrypting device. Not that he was complaining.

He stuck the code breaking device back in his bag, cut the rest of the wires on the keypad so that no one could get through without physically breaking it down, pushed open the door and shut it after himself. But when he turned round and properly looked at his new surroundings, his mouth fell open in shock.

The room was sizeable, ridiculously so if all it was storing was a single diamond, and richly decorated as if he had just stepped into the palace of a monarch. Cream coloured walls and brass light fixtures, security cameras pointed at every single crevice, and moving red lasers criss-crossing every inch of floor save for the metre or so surrounding the display case in the centre.

Lance’s eyes stuck to it, ignoring the sea of red lines that he would soon have to navigate. It was lavish, an ornate podium topped with a thick glass case in which sat a plush cushion. And on that cushion?

The biggest goddamn diamond Lance had ever seen in his life.

From where he stood he could tell  that it was easily two inches across, cut in that stereotypical diamond shape, and its facets were brilliantly reflecting the light. It looked more like a movie prop than anything.

What confused him, however, was how Zarkon had decided to house the precious gem. Lance had been expecting a small dark vault, deeper underground and with far more security measures than this. But this? This looked like a goddamn museum. A way to show it off and flaunt the expensive gem.

Maybe Zarkon was getting too cocky. He had, of course, dominated the diamond heist market for years now with the Galra. Nobody would seriously contemplate robbing him. It was a suicide mission, right?

But here Lance was, and all that stood between him and millions and millions of dollars were a few lousy laser beams.

Or… maybe Zarkon was goading him. Maybe he was tricking him. Maybe he was making the heist look impossible from the outside, then making it feel like a piece of cake once inside – to lull him into a false sense of security. Maybe once he grabbed the diamond, a SWAT team would descend from the ceiling and pump him full of lead.

He looked up at the ceiling, then, just to be sure that _wasn’t_ happening. It was vaulted, made up of thick glass that provided a view of the dark sky above. Another big ‘hey, look at how easy this is, come rob me’ right in Lance’s face. Although the panels did look inches thick, and they were undoubtedly bullet proof, and probably rigged with so many alarms that it wasn’t funny.

Zarkon would most likely expect people to attempt a break in from up there. But even though it was the most direct and obvious route, it was also the most stupidly dangerous and suicidal.

Which is why Lance’s jaw dropped open when someone, obviously having been quietly cutting away at that glass for the past however long, removed a huge circular piece of it and left a hole big enough to allow a person.

No fucking way. How had they done that without triggering the alarms?

Lance watched with an open mouth as the _someone_ – dressed all in black – lowered themselves through the hole, their belt secured to a winch up on the roof with what seemed to be military grade cord. They began the quick descent to the ground, but apparently sensing another presence in the room, they stopped halfway down.

Lance’s brain had momentarily ceased all higher functions, but as the person turned their head and locked eyes with him, he felt like he had been slapped. Because even though he was wearing a red bandana that covered half his face, Lance would recognise that mullet anywhere.

Lance stared at Keith, and Keith stared back at him, and it felt like an eternity until the intruding asshole simply turned away and continued lowering himself down to the ground.

“Oh, no, no, no you don’t.” Lance dropped his bag to the ground, waited for a gap to appear between the moving red lasers, and kicked it across the floor where it stopped close to the display case. If he was going to get past this field without triggering the alarm or slicing himself in half, it’d be a lot easier without the extra weight. “No you fucking don’t. _I’m_ stealing that diamond.”

Keith touched down on the floor and levelled him with an unimpressed look as he detached himself from the rope. “Who are you?”

Lance scoffed in offense as he ducked under the first laser. “Who am I? Uh, the name's Lance McClain. Highly skilled diamond thief.”

“Never heard of you.”

“That means I’m good at what I do.”

“Or it means you’re shit.” He paused. “You know who I am?”

Lance executed a perfect cartwheel, landed smoothly and gave him a look. “Yeah, Mullet. Allura’s a friend of mine and you’ve worked a few jobs for her before.”

Keith made a noise of acknowledgement and began rifling around in his bag. Acting as if Lance would just let him steal the diamond, when it was his prize fair and square. Lance narrowed his eyes, lips pressed into a thin line, and he glared at Keith as he expertly manoeuvred himself past the constantly shifting lasers and tried to find the quickest path across.

“Just thought I’d make this clear, asshole,” Lance grunted, narrowly avoiding a fast moving laser, “I’m taking that diamond, not you.”

He could feel Keith’s eyes on him, could picture the insufferable eyebrow raise in his mind. But no way he was going to let Keith fucking Kogane show him up. So he swung his hips to the side to avoid another laser, waited for the timing to be perfect, and with a smirk on his face he threw himself into a no-handed cartwheel.

His legs arced above him as he watched the lasers pass by below him as if in slow motion, mere inches from slicing his nose off – but then he landed flawlessly, barely out of breath, and suddenly he was out of the laser field and standing right next to Keith.

Lance flashed him a smug grin, pulled off his balaclava and ran a hand through his hair. “You got that, buddy?”

Keith’s dark eyes surveyed him for a brief moment, narrowed slightly, darted down to his lips before coming up just as fast. But then he tugged down the bandana covering half his face and Lance’s brain kind of short circuited.

Because _shit, oh my God, he was hot._

Lance could feel his mouth hanging open slightly but he snapped it shut the moment he realised. This was a job, and this asswipe was stopping him from completing said job. He had to ignore his gorgeous eyes and lean physique and cheekbones that looked like they could cut glass and lips that –

He spared a glance down at the lips in question, and belatedly realised that Keith was talking.

“… mine, okay? So try and stop me from taking it.”

Lance raised an eyebrow, and took a slight step into his personal space. “Is that a challenge?”

Keith took the bait, eyes narrowed, and Lance really didn’t want to admit how attractive he found anger on that face. “You bet your ass it is.”

Fortunately or unfortunately, at that exact moment Lance’s com crackled back into life and Hunk’s distressed and barely decipherable voice sounded in his ear. “Lance – up – you – hurry.”

Maintaining eye contact with Keith for a second longer than necessary, he turned to one of the many security cams on the walls and flashed it a thumbs up – there was no point replying via com, but Pidge and Hunk would both be watching the security feed.

When he turned back, Keith had resumed his inspection of the display case. Lance had to admit, he had nearly forgotten about the diamond. But now it was here, a few mere feet from him, and it was even prettier up close. The light refracted through it in an indescribable way, each facet glimmering brilliantly before their eyes, and Lance knew it’d be well worth the weeks of preparation gone into planning this heist.

Keith glanced up at him, all that fiery anger suddenly gone from his voice. Maybe he had already come to the conclusion that Lance was refusing to consider: that they might have to work together to steal the diamond, and split the earnings. But he also didn’t want to consider the other option: dispose of Keith and take the diamond for himself. He might’ve been a thief, and he might have been used to participating in morally unsound and illegal activities, but the thought made him feel a little sick. “You got a tech team on the outside?”

“Yeah.” Lance leaned in close and ran in fingers along the seam of the glass box, trying to find a weak point. There probably wouldn’t be one but it didn’t hurt to check. “They’ve jammed all the motion and heat sensors and they’re looping the security feed. What about you?”

Keith gave a slight shake of his head. “Just a guy on the inside. He cut the alarm on the ceiling and malfunctioned the computers in the security hub, so they can’t see anything anyway.”

“Dangerous,” Lance said, looking over at him. “Isn’t betraying Zarkon guaranteed to get yourself killed?”

Keith’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “A risk he’s willing to take, apparently.”

Lance shrugged and hunkered down, sparing a glance back at the door he had come from, before inspecting the podium. There was a safe door built into the side, complete with an old but incredibly effective combination-style spinning tumbler. Once they got it open, they would probably be able to reach up into it and remove the cushion along with the diamond.

But there was one tiny little problem with that. Pidge and Hunk had been informed that the lock would be an electronic one, able to be opened with his code decryption device. Not… this.

Lance swore under his breath and smacked his palm against the podium, face screwed up in concentration as he tried to think of another way to get it open. “Could we… uh, drill it?”

Keith hunkered down beside him, head cocked slightly and looking more than a little amused. “There’s a seismic alarm embedded in the steel.”

“Drop it?”

“It’s bolted to the floor, dumbass.”

“I’ve got a small explosive in my bag, we could –”

“No fucking way. Have you ever pulled off a diamond heist before?”

“Obviously. I’m standing here with you, aren’t I?”

They glared at each other for a few long moments, before Lance threw up his hands in defeat. “Then what do you propose?”

“How about I crack it?”

Lance stared at him with a brow raised for a few very long moments, but Keith didn’t give any indication that he was joking. Safe cracking was a long and tedious process, and most people got caught before they could even get halfway through the combination. But Keith looked confident, and Lance was all out of other options that wouldn’t trigger the alarm, so he gave a weary sigh and moved aside. “Be my guest, Mr. Mission Impossible.”

Keith huffed a short laugh and knelt beside the podium, ear pressed against the safe door and hand on the rotating knob. He began slowly turning it, brow furrowed in concentration, tongue between his teeth as he listened for the minute tell-tale clicks when a tumbler slid in place.

Lance got to his feet, unable to do anything but stay quiet, and stared at the diamond again. But he soon found his gaze straying down to Keith, watching the focus on his face, how his lips curled into a small smile whenever he got one of the numbers. The way his dark hair fell across his forehead and framed his face, how his gloved fingers deftly worked on the safe, the slope of his muscled shoulders.

The two had never met before now, but Lance had always felt… jealous, he supposed, when hearing stories about the dozens of successful heists Keith had pulled off. They were always filled with death-defying escapes, expensive jewels stolen as easily as anything, crime scenes that were perfectly clean and completely impossible to trace back to him. And sure, Lance was good, but Keith was better.

But he could put aside his stupid insecurities for one night. Because he was glad fate, or whatever, had made them both pick this job on the exact same night – otherwise Lance would have most likely been royally screwed.

He was shaken from his thoughts by Keith, wearing a triumphant grin, shifting back and swinging the safe door open. Lance’s eyebrows shot up, more than impressed, although he wasn’t about to vocalise that. Just another thing to add to the list of incredibly long things that Keith could do better than him.

“Nice work,” he simply said, coming to kneel beside him as they both peered into the hollow interior of the podium. Lance unclipped a small torch from his belt and shone it on the simple mechanism that would allow them to unclip the bottom of the glass display box, then carefully remove the cushion and diamond. It all seemed a little bit too easy, he thought.

“This is way too easy,” muttered Keith a few moments later.

Lance was glad they agreed on that, but that didn’t stop Keith from reaching inside and gripping the release mechanism with one hand. There was a noise like a whip cracking and Keith yelped, snatched his hand back at cradled it against his chest.

“What the fuck?” hissed Lance.

“It’s electrified,” he spat, wincing and trying to get a better look inside. But then – well, everything kind of went to shit.

The soft white lighting suddenly switched to a flashing red, a deafening siren began wailing, and Keith and Lance stared at each other with a look of abject horror.

“Fuck!” Keith shouted. “Fuck, how do we get it out?”

Lance didn’t hesitate. He jumped to his feet, rifled through his bag and procured a black handgun. He checked the cartridge, flicked the safety off, and aimed it at the glass case. It didn’t matter whether or not they tripped the alarm now. All that mattered was getting the diamond out then escaping, and preferably not dying.

“Get behind me and cover your eyes,” Lance ordered, and Keith quickly complied, side pressed to his back as he shielded his face behind his forearm. He squeezed the trigger, the ear-splitting sound making him wince, and turned his own head to the side to avoid being blinded by the subsequent flash of bright light.

A few seconds later Lance crossed over to the case and prodded the spot where the bullet had lodged itself. It had passed through one entire side and stuck in the opposite glass panel, and the spider web cracks in the glass made Lance nod in satisfaction.

“What the hell was that?” asked Keith, voice raised to be heard over the alarm.

“Incendiary armour-piercing ammunition,” he said, then got the butt of the gun and smacked it into the glass. A few more cracks appeared but it didn’t break. “Works on most bullet proof glass.” He hit the glass again. The third time, the entire panel gave way and shattered into jagged pieces.

Heart pounding in his chest, Lance stared wordlessly at the diamond – nestled in its plush red cushion, surrounded by pieces of broken glass, right there for the taking.

They’d done it. They’d actually done it.

He had no time to question when ‘he’ had become ‘they’, because then Keith was gripping his arm and saying that they needed to go, _right fucking now_.

Lance took the leather satchel that Keith offered him and quickly, but no less carefully, slipped the deceivingly heavy diamond into it. He could hear muffled shouting from beyond the vault door that he had come through, and rhythmic thuds as they attempted to break it down.

Keith grabbed the hanging cord he had used to lower himself into the room and clipped it to his harness again. There was then a horrible – but thankfully brief – moment, in which Keith turned to look at Lance and he thought he was going to leave him behind. Grab the satchel from his hands, escape by himself with the diamond, let his rival be taken hostage and tortured by the Galra.

But then the vault door was crashing inwards, finally having been ripped off its hinges by a squad of angry looking guards, and Keith was wrapping his arms around him. Lance yelped and reciprocated the gesture, one arm around his waist and the other clutching at his shoulder, and they rocketed upwards at a speed he thought might snap the cable in half.

The laser field disabled, dark clothed guards swarmed into the room, and their bullets tore into the empty space below their feet. There was flashing red, the echoing cacophony of a dozen guns firing all at once, the weight of the diamond clutched painfully tight in his palm, the warmth of Keith pressed against him as they reached the arching glass ceiling. A bullet tore into his calf and it felt like fire, like someone pressing hot metal into his flesh –

And then Keith was pulling them both out of the room, onto the glass roof, into the refreshingly sharp night air. Lance gasped in pain and clutched at his leg, felt hot blood soak through the fabric of his glove. Keith was pulling him further away from the hole, pressing his hands against his shoulders, his chest, his cheeks.

“Lance, fuck, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he choked out, biting down on the pain, and he pressed the small satchel into Keith’s palm. Didn’t want to get the diamond covered in blood. He gave a shaky laugh, trying to mask just how much it hurt. “Never been shot before.”

“Doesn’t look like fun,” Keith said with a wry grin, trying to humour him, as he carelessly shoved their stolen prize into his bag. He spared a glance towards the hole in the glass, from which they could still clearly hear shouting and the siren, and set Lance with a look that was equal parts concerned and determined. “We need to move. Can you walk?”

He gave a short nod, and Keith got his arm underneath him before helping him to his feet. Lance sucked in cool breaths between his teeth, but refused to let the injury slow them down as they carefully crossed the sloped glass surface and reached the flat concrete section of the roof. “How you planning to get us out of here, anyway?”

Keith nodded ahead, where he could just make out what looked an awful lot like –

“A zip line?” Lance laughed weakly. “Damn, this really feels like a fucking Mission Impossible flick.”

A smile tugged on Keith’s lips, and he spared another glance behind them before talking. “It’ll take us to that warehouse over there. I’ve got a getaway car parked there, and we’ll drive to a safe house I’ve arranged in the outskirts of the city.” They reached the zip line, and he slipped out from under Lance to fiddle with and adjust the harness. “They’ll be expecting us to leave the country immediately, so it’ll better if we lie low for a few days then fly out.”

Lance nodded, weight shifted awkwardly onto one leg without Keith supporting him. “Christ, you’ve really thought of everything.”

Keith shrugged and jerked his head towards the zip line. “You ready?”

Lance stepped close and wrapped his arms tight around Keith’s middle for the second time that night, and gave him a lazy grin. This close, he could count his eyelashes, study the way the light fell over face, how his eyebrow slightly quirked at being studied so closely. How if he shifted slightly forward, a mere inch, their lips would be pressed together.

Somewhere far behind them, a door was thrown open and the hoarse shouts of those guards returned. Keith attached his harness to the zip line, wrapped one arm around Lance and grabbed the rope above them with the other gloved hand.

And then they were sailing out above the rooftops, the wind in their hair and the lights blurring together below them, Lance’s laughter echoing in the late night air and Keith’s lips stretched into a grin. Gunfire rang out after them but they were untouchable, blending seamlessly with the inky black of the night sky, and Lance held on to Keith tighter than he had ever held onto anything before.

Their feet skimmed the air, the stars shone brightly above them, and they had stolen a diamond worth more than they could even imagine right out from under Zarkon’s nose.

The Parisian night air tasted even sweeter now, and Lance felt a satisfaction he hadn’t known in years. 

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on tumblr [here](http://omgklance.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
